Tibetan Buddhist teacher Pema Chödrön and Zen teacher Bernie Glassman both teach three-step meditations that can help foster wisdom in times of tragedy. When tragedy strikes, we can feel like the ground has dropped out from under our feet. The Buddhist view, though, is that these experiences offer an opportunity to directly experience wisdom and compassion — exactly what [...]
Looking into Laziness
Rather than feeling discouraged by laziness, we could get to know laziness profoundly. This very moment of laziness becomes our personal teacher. Traditionally, laziness is taught as one of the obstacles to awakening. There are different kinds of laziness. First, there’s the laziness of comfort orientation, we just try to stay comfortable and cozy. Then there’s the laziness of [...]
How We Get Hooked and How We Get Unhooked
Pema Chödrön on shenpa, or the urge, the hook, that triggers our habitual tendency to close down. We get hooked in that moment of tightening when we reach for relief. To get unhooked, we begin by recognizing that moment of unease and learn to relax in that moment. You're trying to make a point with a coworker or your partner. At one moment her face is open and she's [...]
10 Buddhist Books Everyone Should Read
10 Buddhist books everyone should read, as selected by the editors of Lion's Roar. After the Ecstasy, the Laundry by Jack Kornfield (Bantam, 2000) According to Jack Kornfield, enlightenment does exist and is even pretty common. The rub is that after achieving it, day-to-day tasks and troubles still await you. This is a guide to translating our spiritual [...]
The Best of Pema Chödrön: Life, Quotes, and Books
Like all explorers, we are drawn to discover what’s out there without knowing yet if we have the courage to face it. -Pema Chödrön One of the most beloved of American Buddhist teachers, Pema Chödrön has devoted her life to inspiring people to awaken and has changed many lives in the process. She is the author of many influential books, such as When Things Fall Apart, Living [...]
Three Methods for Working with Chaos
Times of chaos and challenge can be the most spiritually powerful... if we are brave enough to rest in their space of uncertainty. Pema Chödrön describes three ways to use our problems as the path to awakening and joy: go to the places that scare you, use poison as medicine, and regard what arises as awakened energy. Sometimes late at night or on a long walk with a friend, [...]
Six Kinds of Loneliness
To be without a reference point is the ultimate loneliness. It is also called enlightenment. In the middle way, there is no reference point. The mind with no reference point does not resolve itself, does not fixate or grasp. How could we possibly have no reference point? To have no reference point would be to change a deep-seated habitual response to the world: wanting to [...]
Becoming Pema
Andrea Miller on the life and spiritual journey of one Deirdre Blomfield-Brown. Pema Chödrön was born Deirdre Blomfield-Brown in New York City in 1936. She has said that she had a pleasant childhood with her Catholic family, but that her spiritual life didn’t begin until she attended boarding school, where her intellectual curiosity was cultivated. At age twenty-one, [...]
Take Three Conscious Breaths
Pema Chödrön teaches us pause practice, a simple technique we can use anytime we need a break from our habitual patterns. Our habits are strong, so a certain discipline is required to step outside our cocoon and receive the magic of our surroundings. Pause practice—taking three conscious breaths at any moment when we notice that we are stuck—is a simple but powerful practice [...]
Choosing Peace
There is a key moment, says Pema Chödrön, when we make the choice between peace and conflict. Here she describes a practice we can do at that very moment to bring peace for ourselves, for others, and for the world. If we want to make peace, with ourselves and with the world at large, we have to look closely at the source of all of our wars. So often, it seems, we want to [...]